There were one thousand places in sight for a man of great skill to hide himself in an overwatch position, and Verdoorn couldn’t help the prickly sensation that came with the worry that the Gray Man had eyes on him right now.

He turned away from the view, facing the women and girls. In a calm voice, certainly calmer than he felt, he said, “We will all be leavin’ in fifteen minutes. You be good girls, and this will go smoothly.” His voice lowered, turning ominous. “But if you try anything . . . run, scream, fight, resist. If you try . . . anything . . . I’ll punish you myself, then I’ll feed you to the sharks.”

* * *

• • •

Maja sat in the middle of the room, staring at the silhouette of the man who was obviously in charge here, and her heart pounded. Not because of the threat the South African had just made, not because of his dark tone, and not because of the gun he’d just revealed and then put away.

These reasons were not why her lower back seized with terror, the hairs on her arms stood up, and she thought she might be sick.

She felt the tremors of terror because, even though she could not see the man’s face, she knew exactly who he was.

She recognized his voice, and suddenly things began to fall into place in her mind.

But no comfort came with this newfound understanding. On the contrary, now she was even more certain she’d never, ever go home again.

The girl the captors had been calling Maja since the day she was taken was actually named Roxana Vaduva. She was Romanian, twenty-three years old, and a university student in Bucharest, majoring in the performing arts.

But none of that, not even her name, applied to her anymore, now that she’d heard the South African speak. She was certain she’d never be called Roxana again, she’d never go home to Romania again, she’d never live till her next birthday, and of course she would never go back to school.

She knew what was happening now. It all made perfect sense.

Roxana had recognized the big South African the instant she heard his voice in the dark, bomb-shattered warehouse in Dubrovnik, because she had first met him in a nightclub a few weeks earlier, when her sister, an investigator from Europol, sent her in to meet some rich bankers in order to help her with a case. The South African had been called John, had been at the American Tom’s side each of the four times she met with him during the week he was in Bucharest. John had never conversed with Roxana directly, but he sat close by, spoke often with Tom’s bodyguard, local mob guys, and the employees of the nightclub. Roxana had asked Tom what John’s role was, shouting the question into his ear during especially loud techno music, but Tom had simply explained that the man was a subordinate from South Africa, and they were on the business trip together. Roxana had wondered about the man after this.

The bodyguard had been introduced as Sean; he was American, also. He seemed laid-back, especially compared to the bald South African. She’d even caught him drinking a couple of shots of vodka when his boss wasn’t looking.

But Tom was the most charming of them all. The minute she’d approached his table, he asked her to sit next to him; he’d poured her Dom Perignon and regaled her with stories about his homes in exotic locations around the world.

She’d been cool and standoffish with the American, despite his instant, obvious fascination with her; Roxana was both a talented actress as well as a confident flirt who knew how to attract men. She didn’t sleep around but wasn’t above getting a guy to buy her a drink in a bar by flashing a couple of glances his way. She knew how to play a role. She’d performed in theater in Bucharest and Timisoara since grade school, and had even done some commercial work for everything from bottled water to makeup to the Romanian car manufacturer Dacia.

She knew how to sell herself, and she laid the push-pull on thick with Tom, because she saw this as an opportunity to gain the respect of her older, aloof, and dismissive sister.

Then, on their fourth meeting together, Tom had tried to rape her. Roxana had run away, knowing she’d failed to gain anything useful for her sister, but glad the affair was behind her.

Until the previous week, when she was drugged while out with friends and kidnapped by a cabdriver, then taken to a cellar somewhere in Bucharest.

Since that evening she’d felt the panic and desperation, but only tonight did she know, without reservation, that she would not survive.

She’d been cruel to Tom, he’d gotten angrier and angrier each night that she’d spurned his sexual advances, and then she’d fought with him when he tried to overpower her.

Her sister had insisted he was just some kind of a banker, but if he was, in fact, involved in this human trafficking ring, she had no doubts that he could now easily get his revenge.

These were incredibly powerful men in charge of this entire operation, and they could make a young Romanian college student disappear with no effort at all.

Her mind weighed her options, and she considered killing herself. All she had to do was stand up and throw herself out of the huge paneless window ten meters to her left. Just leap over the little broken wall and fall to her death. Quick and easy.

But she didn’t.

She didn’t understand what was holding her back at this point. The desolation she felt knowing that the life she loved was over, to be replaced by a life in hell, was absolute.

But the truth was that she did not want to die.

Not until she took some of these bastards with her.

Roxana Vaduva told herself in that moment that although she was going down, she wasn’t going down without a fight.

* * *

• • •

Scanning with my binos, I eye the Dubrovnik President Hotel, which looks pretty swanky, but to the right of it I see a large patch of empty darkness by the water. As I do my best to adapt to the low light, forms in the dark begin to take shape.

A concrete pad that looks like it could be used as a little dock juts a few meters out into the bay, and then the hill rising from the water is covered in tall grasses and brush. An unlit three-story building rests halfway up the hill to the road, and although it is standing and appears structurally sound, the window glass is gone and there are several gaping holes in the stone walls. Clearly the building was damaged in the war fought here nearly thirty years ago and has been left unattended since.

It’s like this all over the Balkans. Chic tourist areas abut bleak, overgrown warscapes. I saw it in Mostar, and I see it here. The war kicked the shit out of these countries and, even though it ended in the 1990s, there is rubble all around still, evidence of the mayhem from long ago.

I’m flat on my belly on the second floor of an apartment building that’s being built higher on the hill and next to a well-lit and new-looking complex of apartment buildings with views to the bay. Through my twelve-power binoculars I see several SUVs parked near one of the buildings, along with a telltale faint light in a doorway: a sentry checking his phone, perhaps.